By admin 
HangupsMusic.com – New York, NY – The arc of a creative life rarely follows a straight line, but for filmmaker Mike Mills, it has traced a path uniquely his own, culminating in a deeply personal body of work now enshrined by the Criterion Collection. Born and raised amidst the sun-drenched, rebellious spirit of Southern California in the 1970s and ’80s, Mills’ formative years were steeped in the counter-cultural currents that would subtly shape his distinctive artistic voice. Days were spent carving concrete on skateboards, nights reverberated with the raw energy of punk rock, and his intellectual curiosity found an outlet in the rigorous environment of art school. This vibrant tapestry of influences laid the groundwork for a career that would traverse various artistic disciplines before finding its profound expression in cinema.
By the mid-1990s, Mills had carved out a niche as a celebrated graphic artist, his distinct aesthetic—a blend of clean lines, playful minimalism, and a touch of retro-cool—gracing the album covers and tour posters of seminal artists. His designs for the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, and Cibo Matto became visual touchstones of an era, earning him a reputation for stylish, intelligent artistry. The transition into motion pictures felt almost inevitable. The late 1990s saw him directing innovative music videos that captured the zeitgeist and showcasing his early short films at prestigious festivals like Sundance, signaling a burgeoning talent beyond static imagery. His 2005 feature debut, Thumbsucker, an adaptation of Walter Kirn’s coming-of-age novel, presented a film that was unmistakably "indie"—a quirky, cerebral, and subtly melancholic exploration of adolescence, favoring atmospheric depth and emotional texture over conventional narrative beats. It was a promising, if somewhat understated, entry into what many might have anticipated as a predictable "Indie Cinema 101" career.
Then came the seismic shift. Mills embarked on a project that would redefine his artistic trajectory and establish him as a filmmaker of singular vision: a movie about his father. This wasn’t merely a biographical exercise; it was a profound act of excavation and understanding. His father, a man who had lived a closeted life, came out as gay late in his 70s, only to pass away a few years later at 80. Mills delved into his own recollections, interactions, and the complex emotional landscape of familial bonds, grief, and self-discovery. The resulting film, Beginners, chronicled the journey of a thirtysomething graphic designer grappling with his father’s late-life revelation, his own romantic entanglements, and the universal themes of love, loss, and mortality.
What distinguished Beginners was its remarkable tonal balance. It was deeply personal without being strictly autobiographical, imbued with an affection that never veered into sentimentality, and unflinchingly authentic while maintaining a tender, understated grace. The film resonated deeply with audiences and critics alike, earning Christopher Plummer a well-deserved Academy Award at the age of 82 for his poignant portrayal of the elder Mills. Suddenly, the clean lines, the underground cultural references, the art school sensibilities that had defined Mills’ early work converged into something far more expansive and emotionally resonant. Beginners marked the true arrival of Mike Mills, the cinematic humanist.
In the years since Beginners, Mills has solidified his reputation as a rare and genuine original, a filmmaker who crafts deeply affecting portraits of human experience. Now 60, the former skaterat and Cooper Union alumnus has completed what he refers to as an "unconscious triptych" of films, each delving into the intimate contours of his own family life. Following Beginners (his father’s story), he turned his lens to his mother with the critically acclaimed 20th Century Women (2016), and then explored his own anxieties and joys of fatherhood through the lens of an uncle-nephew relationship in C’mon C’mon (2021). Mills readily admits he never set out to chronicle his family in such a structured manner, nor did he initially envision these films as being interconnected beyond the inherent reflection of his own life. Yet, as he notes, they "make a very nice triptych," a collection that has provided career-defining roles for an esteemed ensemble including Ewan McGregor, Annette Bening, Billy Crudup, and Joaquin Phoenix.
The significance of Mills’ work has now been formally recognized with the release of I’ll Remind You of Everything: The Films of Mike Mills by the esteemed Criterion Collection. Sitting in a conference room at Criterion’s downtown Manhattan offices, Mills reflects on this milestone. The box set gathers his celebrated trio of features alongside a curated selection of his earlier shorts, such as the 1996 film Deformer, and iconic music videos for Air ("All I Need") and Talking Heads ("Psycho Killer," famously featuring a beautifully unhinged Saoirse Ronan). This comprehensive collection serves as a visual and emotional timeline, allowing viewers to trace Mills’ artistic evolution and discern the enduring threads that weave through his diverse output. Though he expresses a characteristic humility about receiving the Criterion treatment, the collection unequivocally demonstrates why his singular vision warrants such an honor.
The idea for the expanded set, including shorts and music videos, came from Criterion producer Kim Hendrickson. Mills explains, "She knew enough about my work to know how important the music videos and the short films are to me." He adheres to an "Agnes Varda model: the duration of the film doesn’t equal its importance." Indeed, these shorter works were his entry point into filmmaking, often holding as much personal significance as his features. Revisiting Deformer, one can observe the nascent forms of his signature stylistic and thematic concerns: an emphasis on portraiture, the symbolic weight of objects as context, and the profound way a sense of place informs identity. "It’s basically all my films in miniature," he observes. His penchant for "a good list" over conventional dramaturgical arcs—seeing lists as authentic rather than manipulative—is also evident from his earliest endeavors.
The path to feature filmmaking, however, was not immediately clear. Despite his background in punk bands, art school, and graphic design, Mills recalls the idea of making movies feeling "like going to the moon." He was immersed in the art world at Cooper Union, where the prevailing ethos encouraged artists to transcend the rarefied gallery space and engage with the broader public sphere. Yet, the mechanics of cinema remained elusive. A pivotal moment arrived at age 27 when he watched Errol Morris’s true-crime documentary The Thin Blue Line. "I remember walking out of that and saying, I could do that," he recounts, drawn to its essayistic, list-like structure. Influenced by European masters like Fellini and Godard, as well as the independent spirit of Jim Jarmusch, Mills found his "weird gateway drug" in the form of Spike Jonze, whom he knew through skateboarding. This connection, along with his existing ties to the music industry through record cover design, provided the "sideways" entry he needed, eventually leading to an early EPK for Frank Black, filmed on a whim in a rented Cadillac.
Music, indeed, has been a foundational element in Mills’ creative life. A self-professed "untalented punk rock musician" who still plays piano daily, he views music as his "first creative joy." When writing, he often immerses himself in a single song on loop, seeking a particular emotional resonance. He cites moments like a specific change in a Cate le Bon song or the work of The National, which even led to a collaboration on their 2019 film I Am Easy to Find. For C’mon C’mon, he found constant inspiration in Frank Ocean’s Blond, admiring its unconventional structures. "There can be four separate parts to a Frank Ocean song that don’t recur," he notes, marveling at how such experimental forms could inform his "weird American dad kid movie." Music, for Mills, is a master class in shaping time, a lesson he applies to his filmmaking. He strives for scenes to function like music, creating an "energetic flow" independent of dialogue or editing.
His latest feature, C’mon C’mon, though ostensibly about an uncle and nephew, deeply reflects Mills’ own experiences as a father. He started writing it when his child was six, basing many scenes on their early interactions. Now older, his child has seen the film, finding it "very meta" and aware of the nuanced relationship between life and art. Mills consciously downplays his moviemaking at home, and his child, familiar with the process, understands that a film "based on your life, it’s not actually your life." This distinction between autobiography and memoir is crucial to Mills’ approach. He seeks to infuse his work with "bits of autobiography hidden in plain sight," much like the elusive personal truths he gleaned from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl or the late 1970s films of Woody Allen. He favors Neil Young over Bob Dylan for the former’s more "direct, more vulnerable report from his life." This deliberate distance, akin to a therapeutic perspective, allows him to "see it, appreciate it, maybe have compassion for it, maybe have critique for it." It’s a lucky space to occupy, one he feels "incredibly grateful for." He also openly integrates stories from others, like the poignant detail in C’mon C’mon about a child wanting to be an orphan, a story shared by The National’s Aaron Dessner.
Mills admits his writing process, while becoming more instinctual, still involves considerable trial and error. He once felt the pressure to be more prolific but shed that expectation around age 45, particularly after becoming a father. "I want to live my life. I want to be dad more than anything," he asserts. He’s not vying for the "top shelf" alongside industry giants like Coppola or Spielberg. Instead, he aspires to a career akin to Hal Ashby’s, aiming for "a few good ones." "That’s a bar I could possibly hit," he says, "I’d love to have made Harold and Maude!"
A profound concept explored in the Criterion set’s supplementary features, in a discussion with filmmaker Kristen Johnson, is what Mills terms "the failed project of knowing." This refers to the inherent impossibility of fully comprehending our loved ones, the persistent "void that you just don’t see." He views his films not as therapy, but as an "exploitation" of his therapeutic insights. More profoundly, they serve as a unique means of "communing with my dead parents." His parents, born in the 1920s, were individuals who, in his words, "abandoned themselves" to an American ideal, his father concealing his true identity, his mother grappling with mental illness. "They co-bearded each other and they joined America," he reflects, seeing their lives as a "massive project of self-abandonment." His own work, conversely, is an act of the "opposite of self-abandonment," a persistent effort to hold onto the mysteries of their lives, to understand them, and to keep their presence alive. This process, he reveals, has been "nutritive emotionally."
This deep dive into his family’s past has undeniably enriched his understanding. "I have had to think about these people a lot, and then explain them to other people, and then have them transformed by these other people," he explains. He learned new facets of his father through Christopher Plummer’s nuanced portrayal, a "magic trick" where the actor’s interpretation reveals unexpected truths. Similarly, actors playing versions of himself—like Ewan McGregor in Beginners or Joaquin Phoenix in C’mon C’mon—bring their own instincts, adding layers he hadn’t initially conceived. He actively encourages this, seeing his actors as "authors" who contribute to the character’s evolution.
Conspicuously absent from the Criterion set are his debut feature, Thumbsucker, and his 2007 documentary, Does Your Soul Have a Cold? Mills explains that Thumbsucker, being an adaptation, feels less purely his own, and while he cherishes the experience and the actors involved, he admits, "it didn’t come out as good as I would have hoped." Ultimately, the curated selection of three features, shorts, and music videos simply formed a more cohesive and natural "triptych."
Mills rarely looks back at his completed work. He recounts having to revisit his films for the Criterion set, often with the sound off, much like Fellini, only to find he remembered scenes incorrectly. It’s challenging, he confesses, to dissect his own creative output. Yet, he expresses immense gratitude for the body of work he has created, especially the inclusion of his early shorts. He feels fortunate to have undertaken this journey, one that stands in stark contrast to the self-abandonment he observed in his parents.
Despite the complexities and inherent difficulties of filmmaking, Mills maintains an unwavering belief in the power of his craft. His relationship with filmmaking remains a challenging but vital endeavor. With a hopeful laugh, he concludes, "I do feel like I’m about to make a good one. Any day now, man. It’s coming. It’s about to happen." For a filmmaker whose career has been a testament to profound personal inquiry and artistic evolution, the anticipation of his next cinematic offering is palpable.
